my $datetime = localtime(time);
# returns Thu Nov 22 13:05:26 2001 
# (well at least it did at the time() )
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mitd-Made in the Dark
'Interactive! Paper tape is interactive!
If you don't believe me I can show you my paper cut scars!'

Date::manip is the way to go.
It handles the addition of periods of time to a date, and while the documentation doesn't mention it, using


$date=&DateCalc("today","+ 1week",\$err);
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Would almost certainly work to set date to one week from today.

what would time() return in unix and windows? what dose it mean?

im creating in windows but will need to upload on a unix server.

If you mean you are writing/testing code on windows and uploading to Unix then don't worry things will work as expected ie localtime() will do the right thing. time and localtime() in Perl are really just 'wrappers' around lower level system library calls of the same name. Most (gulp) modern OSes support theses calls,

mitd-Made in the Dark
'Interactive! Paper tape is interactive!
If you don't believe me I can show you my paper cut scars!'

($secs,$mins,$hrs,$dom,$moy,$yrs,$dow,$juldays,$dst) = localtime $reft
+ime;
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The function time() returns the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970. BTW, the $refdate you gave (102049345) is for Monday, March 26, 1973.
$secs: 25
$mins: 2
$hrs: 21
$dom: 26
$moy: 2
$yrs: 73
$dow: 1
$juldays: 84
$dst: 0

If you start out with a reference date like the value returned by time (your example: 102049345) and you say:

$wklater = $reftime + 60*60*24*6
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($secs,$mins,$hrs,$dom,$moy,$yrs,$dow,$juldays,$dst) = localtime $wkla
+ter;
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--Jim

time returns the number of seconds since some arbitrary "epoch" time. For most operating systems, that time is 00:00 Jan 1st 1970 (GMT). As someone else pointed pointed out, that number just passed 1E9.

To convert from a given date to an epoch number use the timelocal function from the (standard) Time::Local module. To convert from an epoch number to a human readable format use the localtime function. You can control the format of this date easier using the POSIX::strftime function.

If you have an epoch date and you want to add or substract a certain period, then you simple convert to the appropriate number of seconds. e.g. to add two weeks to an epoch number, use code like:

$epoch += 2 * 7 * 86_400; # 86,400 seconds in a day
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And finally, people have been plugging modules like Date::Manip, Date::Format and Date::Calc. In my opinion, these have all recently been obsoleted by the release of Matt Sergeant's very wonderful Time::Piece module.

"The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."

use Time::Piece;
use Time::Seconds;

my $refsecs = 102049345; #(Nov. 5 2001) (prefer strptime!)
my $reftime = localtime($refsecs);

for my $week (1..10) {
  print "$week  ", $reftime->strftime("%b. %e %Y %A");
  print " - ",
  $reftime += ONE_DAY * 6;
  print $reftime->strftime("%b. %e %Y %A"), "\n";
  $reftime += ONE_DAY;
}
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